Democrats are getting more comfortable talking about the law, but don’t expect them to make it a central part of their campaigns.

Demo­crats won’t be mount­ing a big polit­ic­al of­fens­ive around the Af­ford­able Care Act any time soon, but they’re be­gin­ning to test the pro-Obama­care wa­ters.

Head­ing in­to the 2014 midterms, Re­pub­lic­ans con­tin­ue to hold a clear ad­vant­age in the polit­ics of Obama­care. And even if the tide does ul­ti­mately shift for the law, it al­most cer­tainly won’t hap­pen by Novem­ber. Still, there are signs that Demo­crats are slowly be­com­ing more con­fid­ent talk­ing about the health care law, or at least parts of it.

“There is a palp­able com­fort that didn’t ex­ist as re­cently as six months ago,” said Chris Jen­nings, who worked on health care strategy in both the Clin­ton and Obama ad­min­is­tra­tions. “I think we’re in trans­ition, mov­ing from a de­fense to an achieve­ment strategy.”

If that trans­ition is hap­pen­ing, though, it’s still in its very early phases.

Demo­crat­ic strategists cau­tioned against read­ing too much in­to the trickle of pro-Obama­care mes­saging some can­did­ates have em­braced. The health care law is find­ing a place in Demo­crats’ cam­paigns of­ten as a byproduct of some oth­er polit­ic­al need, they said, not be­cause of a broad­er stra­tegic shift with­in the party.

They down­played, for ex­ample, the re­cent ad in which Mark Pry­or of Arkan­sas—one of the Sen­ate’s most vul­ner­able Demo­crats—high­lighted pop­u­lar pro­vi­sions of the Af­ford­able Care Act. The ad shows Pry­or, ap­pear­ing along­side his fath­er, dis­cuss­ing his own bout with can­cer and say­ing he “helped pass a law that pre­vents in­sur­ance com­pan­ies from can­celing your policy if you get sick, or deny cov­er­age for preex­ist­ing con­di­tions.”

Many lib­er­al pun­dits were ec­stat­ic about the spot, pro­claim­ing that Demo­crats fi­nally un­der­stood how to win on Obama­care. But Demo­crat­ic strategists said that wasn’t the most im­port­ant ele­ment; the ad is “very much about Mark telling his per­son­al story,” and not about mak­ing a pro-Obama­care ar­gu­ment, said Justin Barasky, a spokes­man for the Demo­crat­ic Sen­at­ori­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee.

“This is not a re­sponse ad by any means; this is a bio ad, this is an ad about who he is. They would have run this ad re­gard­less of what the polit­ics of ACA are,” a Demo­crat­ic strategist said.

Sim­il­arly, Sen. Kay Hagan has made the law’s Medi­caid ex­pan­sion a key com­pon­ent of her bid for reelec­tion in con­ser­vat­ive North Car­o­lina, which has re­jec­ted the cov­er­age ex­pan­sion.

Demo­crats’ emer­ging con­fid­ence comes as the law is tak­ing a smal­ler role in Re­pub­lic­ans’ at­tack ads. GOP can­did­ates and al­lies in a hand­ful of states—in­clud­ing North Car­o­lina—have shif­ted from an all-Obama­care-all-the-time ad­vert­ising strategy to one that in­cor­por­ates Obama­care in­to a lar­ger mes­sage about jobs and the eco­nomy.

All those trend lines are point­ing in the same dir­ec­tion, but that doesn’t mean Demo­crats have sud­denly won the up­per hand on Obama­care.

First of all, it might not work. Pry­or and Hagan have both backed in­to health care: He em­braced it as a way to tell a per­son­al story, and Hagan’s fo­cus on Medi­caid is one that should res­on­ate with the Demo­crat­ic base in her state. But there’s still a pretty good chance that Pry­or and Hagan—like many of their col­leagues who also voted for Obama­care—will lose.

And des­pite the ex­cite­ment Pry­or’s ad stirred up on the left, Jen­nings said he doesn’t ex­pect to see a rush of Demo­crats tak­ing the same tack. Can­did­ates have oth­er is­sues they’d rather fo­cus on, he said, and there’s “some health care fa­tigue out there”; after five years of bit­ter par­tis­an fight­ing about Obama­care, polls show most people are ready to move on.

The same polls also show that the health care law re­mains un­pop­u­lar—and poorly un­der­stood.

In the most re­cent monthly track­ing poll from the Kais­er Fam­ily Found­a­tion, the law’s fa­vor­ab­il­ity rat­ing held steady at 39 per­cent, while its un­fa­vor­able rat­ing rose to an all-time high of 53 per­cent. The same sur­vey has found that Re­pub­lic­ans’ op­pos­i­tion to the law is much more pas­sion­ate than Demo­crats’ sup­port for it. And even though the pub­lic at large wants Con­gress to fix the law rather than re­peal it, a ma­jor­ity of Re­pub­lic­ans said they’d prefer to keep the fo­cus on re­peal.

Those at­ti­tudes are so en­trenched that Demo­crats may nev­er hold an ad­vant­age on Obama­care. But polls also show that voters like many spe­cif­ic ele­ments of the law—which is prob­ably why Pry­or didn’t men­tion it by name when he de­scribed one of its cent­ral pro­vi­sions.

In Kais­er’s March poll, the most re­cent to sur­vey in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents of the law, 70 per­cent of voters said they ap­prove of a policy re­quir­ing in­surers to cov­er people with preex­ist­ing con­di­tions. Just 54 per­cent, though, knew that policy was part of Obama­care. Like­wise, in the most re­cent sur­vey, just 37 per­cent knew that the law of­fers con­sumers a choice among private in­sur­ance plans.

That dis­con­nect has dogged Demo­crats throughout the Obama­care de­bate, and it helps ex­plain why Re­pub­lic­ans’ job is so much easi­er than Demo­crats’. But now that the law’s most pop­u­lar pro­vi­sions are fi­nally in place, Jen­nings said, Demo­crats can start to fol­low the ad­vice former Pres­id­ent Clin­ton has been of­fer­ing: Frame the de­bate around Re­pub­lic­an at­tempts to take away real-life be­ne­fits.

“Time is def­in­itely on the side of the ACA. As time goes by, more people be­ne­fit.”¦ It isn’t a the­or­et­ic­al dis­cus­sion any longer,” Jen­nings said.

"President Trump signed a sweeping spending bill Friday afternoon, averting another partial government shutdown. The action came after Trump had declared a national emergency in a move designed to circumvent Congress and build additional barriers at the southern border, where he said the United States faces 'an invasion of our country.'"

Source:

REDIRECTS $8 BILLION

Trump Declares National Emergency

6 days ago

THE DETAILS

"President Donald Trump on Friday declared a state of emergency on the southern border and immediately direct $8 billion to construct or repair as many as 234 miles of a border barrier. The move — which is sure to invite vigorous legal challenges from activists and government officials — comes after Trump failed to get the $5.7 billion he was seeking from lawmakers. Instead, Trump agreed to sign a deal that included just $1.375 for border security."

Source:

COULD SOW DIVISION AMONG REPUBLICANS

House Will Condemn Emergency Declaration

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"House Democrats are gearing up to pass a joint resolution disapproving of President Trump’s emergency declaration to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall, a move that will force Senate Republicans to vote on a contentious issue that divides their party. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Thursday evening in an interview with The Washington Post that the House would take up the resolution in the coming days or weeks. The measure is expected to easily clear the Democratic-led House, and because it would be privileged, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be forced to put the resolution to a vote that he could lose."

Source:

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, DRUG FORFEITURE FUND

Where Will the Emergency Money Come From?

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"ABC News has learned the president plans to announce on Friday his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from Congressional appropriations approved Thursday night, executive action and an emergency declaration. A senior White House official familiar with the plan told ABC News that $1.375 billion would come from the spending bill Congress passed Thursday; $600 million would come from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion would come from the Pentagon's drug interdiction program; and through an emergency declaration: $3.5 billion from the Pentagon's military construction budget."

Source:

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL SIGN

House Passes Funding Deal

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"The House passed a massive border and budget bill that would avert a shutdown and keep the government funded through the end of September. The Senate passed the measure earlier Thursday. The bill provides $1.375 billion for fences, far short of the $5.7 billion President Trump had demanded to fund steel walls. But the president says he will sign the legislation, and instead seek to fund his border wall by declaring a national emergency."